Teaching active comprehension helps students learn to ask their own questions and guide their own thinking. (MKM)

Experimenters analyzed a prose passage into 350 idea units, then interspersed throughout the text pictures depicting main ideas, or both main ideas and nonessential details. For fourth- and sixth-grade subjects, pictures did facilitate both immediate and delayed recall, but only of main ideas. (Author/JEG)

The author examines current techniques used to teach elementary school children how to analyze and compare. Emphasis is placed upon developing these modes of mental activity while teaching biological concepts. (DE)

The relationship of lateral awareness and directionality with intellectual ability, academic achievement, and age was investigated with 288 first through third grade elementary school children. With the exception of first graders, Ss were administered three tests: the Lockavitch Test for Lateral Awareness and Directionality (LTLAD), the Short Form…

In this study 60 first and fourth graders selected pictures that best represented the meanings of sentences read to them. Results indicated that children were instantiating the target words with specific concepts rather than bringing to mind abstract, undifferentiated meanings. (HOD)

The development of cognitive processes is essential to the development of reading comprehension skills. (MKM)

An exploration of children's responses to some of the Caldecott prize-winning books, using a Piagetian-type interview. An attempt is made to find out why some children are "turned off" by books that, from all ostensible evidence, are of high quality. (CS)

An increase in the cognitive restructuring aspect of field-independence was found to be associated with an increase in formal operational thought in 11- to 12-year-olds who were given materials designed to achieve this result. Materials used (including computer programs) are described in an appendix. (JN)

The relationship between retention of story propositions and inferences was studied in two experiments on groups of children who averaged five and eight years in age. In the first experiment, the motives and theme of protagonists were varied and found to affect the number and kind of inferences made by eight-year-olds. The increase in the number…

Shows a wide variety of task performance ability. Supports the hypothesis that the tasks require the use of the same or a unified set of cognitive processes. (RL)

Concludes that children have a far broader range of intellectual interests than has generally been recognized. Bringing them into contact with fields of knowledge, methods of inquiry in these fields, and the processes of logical reasoning at a time when they have a natural receptivity which can have a fundamental impact on their intellectual…

The relationship between children's knowledge of particular situations and their comprehension of stories about them was investigated. Children in kindergarten and grades two, four, and six heard stories about differentially familiar situations and then answered questions. "Scripts," characterizing knowledge about stereotypical events, were…

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CERTAIN INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES AND ACHIEVEMENT OF INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES FOR SELECTED MATHEMATICS TOPICS TAUGHT IN THE HIGHER ELEMENTARY GRADES WERE EXAMINED. INSTRUMENTS WERE CHOSEN TO ASSESS MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT AND INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES. THESE WERE ADMINISTERED BY CLASSROOM TEACHERS TO 765 STUDENTS IN THE FOURTH,…

The cognitive levels of 60 children from grades one, three, and five were compared with their linguistic performance on selected examples of similes and metaphors. Cognitive level was measured using Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices; a new instrument was developed to assess children's linguistic performance. Results indicated a significant…

Eighty-two children (aged 4 through 6) were administered a Backward Digit Span test to measure M-space (mental capacity) and four conservation tasks: number, substance, continuous quantity and weight. (MS)